Yarn Craft for Kids: A Circle Garland!

I’m not really sure what to call this yarn craft, because the craft got adjusted many times during the process. Remember last week when I had two failed crafts before having a success with the vehicle tracks painting? Well, this is one of the failures. It turned out to not be a failure after all.

Henry attempted to cut some yarn (again), but yarn is not a great material to learn to cut. I cut various lengths of yarn in various colors. As I cut each piece, I asked Henry,

“Should this piece be long or short?” “Longer?” “How about this short?”

Henry mixed a watered down glue mixture in a cake pan. (Do not give your kid any more water than you actually want to add. Our glue mixture ended up very watered down.) Stir it up any way you like. With a paintbrush. With your hands. Toss it. Turn it.

Just to pile up the yarn on a sheet pan and make a sort of yarn-mobile. (Like our Spaghetti Mobile flop.) With every piece of yarn, Henry reached it as high as he could, using the paintbrush to make it even higher!

I think Attempt 2 would have been a fine craft… but then I thought of the muffin tin! Henry transferred the yarn once again, from the pan to the muffin tin. Again, reaching as high as we could with each piece.

Henry carefully dangled each piece into each spot.

In a couple of places, Henry created what he called ‘bridges’ between the cups.

Then we left them sit to dry. And dry. I put them in the oven to speed up the process (being very cautious because of the Spaghetti Flop, I put it only on 150 degrees for only 20 minutes).

Still not dry. Wait some more. I squirted some straight glue over the yarn. (I was worried our mixture was too watered down.)

Two full days later… They were dry.

I asked Henry what he’d like to do with the little yarn circles. He wanted to string them together and hang them on the window.

Our new Yarn Circle Garland.

I used a funnel to save the leftover watered down glue for a later project. The funnel provided lots of entertainment for Henry when he cleaned up the sticky dishes.

Lovely reflections on how process art/creativity often really is with young children! And this is the way it should be isn't it? When it's just SO perfect and elaborate there's no way the child really did it and what's the point in that?! Lovely end product and even better fun and mess in the making :-)

Loved that you were able to accept that he couldn't do the original project, and move on to a new idea. I sometimes struggle wanting my kids crafts to have a specific and perfect end result, but then they don't get any fun or learning out of it, and you end up doing the whole project! This is a great reminder that if you just let go and let kids do their thing, you'll still get great results. PLus I loved his bridges, too adorable/smart!

Really fun! I hope you will share this wreath this week over at The cSI Project and any other projects you have using yarn.http://www.thecsiproject.comI know it is from 2011 but still a goodie and continues to inspire.

I am toddler teacher and I tried the yarn garland the kids loved dipping the yarn into the watery glue. However it takes forever to dry so our art project has been drying for the whole weekend. looking forward to hang it up in the class.